The neo-Jacobites

Interesting. From the editorial board of the Wall Street Journal, The Presumption of Guilt.

The last-minute accusation of sexual assault against Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh is an ugly spectacle by any measure. But if there is a silver lining, it is that the episode is providing an education for Americans on the new liberal standard of legal and political due process.

As Ms. Hill and Sen. Hirono aver, the Democratic standard for sexual-assault allegations is that they should be accepted as true merely for having been made. The accuser is assumed to be telling the truth because the accuser is a woman. The burden is on Mr. Kavanaugh to prove his innocence. If he cannot do so, then he is unfit to serve on the Court.

This turns American justice and due process upside down. The core tenet of Anglo-American law is that the burden of proof always rests with the person making the accusation. An accuser can’t doom someone’s freedom or career merely by making a charge.

The accuser has to prove the allegation in a court of law or in some other venue where the accused can challenge the facts. Otherwise we have a Jacobin system of justice in which “J’accuse” becomes the standard and anyone can be ruined on a whim or a vendetta.

While I agree with the substance of the editorial, that is not what I found interesting.

"Otherwise we have a Jacobin system of justice" is what caught my eye. I have discussed in the past the awkwardness of properly identifying the destructive left-wing ideologies. Yes, they all source to Marxism and ultimately the totalitarian/authoritarian traditions of utopianists and Plato where man is perfectible as long as properly governed by Philosopher Kings. This contrasts with the Western Age of Enlightenment Classical Liberal position where individuals are recognized as having a set of natural rights and the freedom to exercise those rights. Free markets, freedom of speech and assembly, consent of the governed, rule of law, equality before the law, these are all precepts of the Classical Liberal and under gramscian assault today by multi-culturalists, anti-colonialists, social justice advocates, economic egalitarians, third-wave feminists, deconstructionists, intersectionalists, etc.

It is not quite correct to call them simply Marxists. They certainly are not liberal. Each has their own rationale for their evils, their own ideology and precepts. The fact that they have common roots does not make them identical. And yet, they are similar to one another in their comprehensive rejection, root and branch, of the Classical Liberal tradition. What to call this mob of antithetical ideologies.

I am reading an excellent book at the moment, The Great Mutiny by James Dugan. No, not the Great Indian Mutiny of 1857 (which is also fascinating history.) The Spithead and Nore naval mutinies of 1797.

Reading Dugan has also caused me to dip back into Simon Schama's Citizens: A Chronicle of the French Revolution, refreshing my recollection of the details of that disastrous revolution.

In both Dugan and Schama, there is extensive discussion of the violence and mayhem arising from the French Jacobins, the early leaders of the Revolution and the necessary predecessors of Napoleon, the ultimate example of the anti-Classical Liberal. While drawing inspiration from the Rights of Man by Thomas Paine, and spouting pieties about
liberté, égalité, fraternité, the Jacobins, at their core, conceptualized themselves as the Philosopher Kings, brooking no dissent from the unwashed and the unruly. Disagreement led to an appointment with Monsieur Guillotine.

Freedom of speech? Gone. Personal liberty? Gone. Sanctity of human life? Gone. Respect for tradition? Gone. Equality of rights? Gone. The Jacobins sure look like like the many strands of modern left-wing ideology. The language and slogans are similar, the actions (repressive and destructive) are similar, the hatred of freedom is similar.